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About Me

Thean Eu

Greetings. I'm a journalist from Business Times Malaysia.
Despite the global economic slowdown, the telecommunications industry, in general, continues to capture the imagination with its potential for one billion new subscribers decades to come.
Broadband Internet penetration rates continue to rise while the impending introduction of next generation mobile services promises to revitalize a mobile market that has already reached saturation levels in a number of countries.
Hopefuly this blog will provide a unique platform for the sharing of ideas and experience from all sectors of the telecommunications and information technology industries – policy, regulatory, economic and development issues – to meet the challenge of strengthening the information society locally and other countries.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Sorry guys. Did not blog for some time as a result of... poor time management. Anyway, as Malaysian operators are expected to launch iPhone 4 within the next few months (some say its as early as 24th July...), so it's good to post about news concerning the all-new iPhone 4.

Came across this Bloomberg article today, that basically says:

1. HTC phone has 35 times fewer complaints than the iPhone 4.2. Steve Jobs says most smart-phones have such problems as well, including HTC and BlackBerry.

By Tim Culpan July 19 (Bloomberg) -- HTC Corp. said its phone model named by Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs as having antenna signal problems received 35 times fewer complaints thanfor the iPhone 4.

“The phone that was called out in the Apple press conference, the HTC Droid Eris, has experienced a customerinquiry of less than two-one hundredths of one percent - 35times less,” than the iPhone 4, Taoyuan, Taiwan-based HTC saidin an e-mailed response to Bloomberg News questions today.

Jobs said July 16 that 0.55 percent of customers of Apple’s newestphone called with complaints about radio frequency performance.

Jobs last week offered a free case to buyers of Apple’siPhone 4 after customers complained about losing signal strengthwhen the device is held in certain ways.

“Every smartphone”has this problem, Jobs said, listing some devices made by HTC and Research In Motion Ltd. as also having lower reception. Motorola Inc. Co-Chief Executive Sanjay Jha responded the same day, saying his company’s own devices don’t have the same antenna shortcomings as the iPhone 4. Jobs didn’t addressMotorola directly.

“It is disingenuous to suggest that all phones performequally,” Jha said in an e-mailed statement. “In our owntesting we have found that Droid X performs much better than iPhone 4 when held by consumers.”

RIM, Samsung

Jobs also named RIM’s BlackBerry Bold and SamsungElectronics Co.’s Omnia II as having reduced reception whengripped in certain positions.

“Samsung mobile phones employ an internal antenna designtechnology that optimizes reception quality for any type ofhand-grip use,” the Suwon, South Korea-based company said in ane-mailed statement today.

HTC, the world’s largest maker of handsets using operatingsystems from Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., posted recordsales last quarter as demand for Android-based models climbed.

Apple in March accused HTC of infringing its patents for userinterface, hardware and underlying architecture, with theTaiwanese company retaliating with a lawsuit in March aimed atthe iPhone, iPod and iPad.

“It is well understood by the industry that if enough of aphone and its antenna is covered, the radio frequency signalwill be” reduced to some extent, HTC said in the e-mail. “At HTC, we carefully engineer our phones to ensure that this effectis minimized in real-world use.”